Africahas the greatest disparity in clean drinking water in the world – 40% of the African people lack access to safe water. LaFraniere. NYT Journalist.8/27/04. (Sharon, “Sub-Saharan Africa Lags in Water Cleanup” New York Times. Ebsco.)
Sub-SaharanAfricais lagging far behind the rest of the developing world in access to clean water, with more than 4 out of 10 people still relying on rivers, ponds or other unsafe sources of drinking water, according to a United Nations report issued Thursday. Although about 130 million more of the region's residents have gained access to clean water since 1990, the report states, governments are not moving quickly enough to meet the United Nations' goal of providing three-fourths of the population with safe drinking water by 2015. Only 58 percent of the 684 million people in sub-SaharanAfricahave clean water, compared with an average of 79 percent for the entire developing world. The report attributesAfrica's slow progress to conflict, political instability, population growth and the low priority that is given to water and sanitation by regional leaders. At least 30 percent of the region's water systems are inoperable because of age or disrepair, according to officials from Unicef, which issued the report with the World Health Organization.The rest of the world is mostly on track to meet the United Nations' targets for clean water, the report said. About 1.1 billion more people have clean water now than in 1990. Another 1.1 billion still lack it, most of them in Asia, home to more than half the world's population.
The Water for the Poor Act provides the ideal framework for giving water assistance toAfrica; however lack of funding prevents its success and prevents us from mobilizing other countries. Lochery, CARE Water Team Director,5/16/07 (Peter, “Beyond the Status Quo: Bringing Down Barriers to Water and Sanitation Provision in Africa through Implementation of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act”, http://www.care.org/newsroom/articles/2007/05/lochery_water_testimony.pdf)
The Water for the Poor Act made the provision of safe water, sanitation, and hygiene an explicit objective of US foreign assistance and called for the State Department to develop a comprehensive strategy outlining how the US would go about expanding equitable access to water and sanitation in countries where the need is greatest. However, implementation of the Act has been limited and has not been backed by the increased appropriations required to realize the goals encompassed in it. The passage of the Water for the Poor Act presents an opportunity around which theUScan bring expertise gained through programs in other regions of the world and significantly expanded funding to bear in sub-SaharanAfrica. The strategy required by the Act also helps address gaps in responding to the African water crisis. These include: designating high priority recipient countries toward which funding should be targeted; determining which of those countries are truly committed to instituting the necessary reforms and enhancing accountability to their citizens; developing a system of measurable goals, benchmarks and timetables for monitoring US foreign assistance; and coordinating assistance with other donor countries. The US Government should also focus on complementary activities to strengthen civil societies’, governments’, and the media’s capacity to scrutinize their water and sanitation sector and demand that money be used appropriately and effectively. This capacity building will benefit not only the country receiving aid by ensuring that water and sanitation services are being delivered as they should be, but also the US as it will encourage the careful use of foreign assistance funds.
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Observation Two – Water Wars
Lack of a solution to theAfricawater crisis makes water wars inevitable.
Peter J. Ashton, South African Institute of Ecologists and Environmental Scientists, water quality and water resources specialist CSIR, May 2002, (http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&issn=0044-7447&volume=031&issue=03&page=0236 )
In the light of the evidence already presented, it is clear that water conflicts inAfricawill be inevitable if we do not prevent them from occurring. This somewhat simplistic statement is guided by the knowledge that Africa's freshwater resources are finite and cannot continue indefinitely to support the escalating demands that we make of them. If no actions are taken, competition for the available water supplies will continue to increase to a point where radical interventions will be required to avert conflict (8). Turton (28) has argued convincingly that water is most unlikely to be the direct cause of a "war" over water in Africa. Nevertheless, there is a distinct possibility that increasing demands for water could contribute to regional instability if the demands approach the limits of the available supplies and the "competing" societies are unable to adapt appropriately to this situation (8). Clearly, where more than one country or an entire region is involved in a dispute, a wide array of coping strategies and mechanisms can be deployed to resolve the problem. The presence of effective communication mechanisms and efficient institutional structures forms an extremely important component of all such strategies. The common-sense statement: "prevention is better than cure" provides a perfect outline of the goals and objectives that should direct our strategies and actions when we seek to deal with the complex issues of water-related conflicts. However, despite its apparent simplicity, this ideal often eludes us in practice (8). A large part of the reason for this lies in the diverse, and often contradictory, ways in which we attach value to water, and the ways in which we strive to derive both individual and collective benefit from our use of water. Too often our objectives have a short-term, local focus aimed at meeting objectives and solving problems today, rather than a far longer-term focus on the sustainable and equitable use of our water resources on a regional or continental scale (8, 17). If our demands for water outstrip our ability to manage water as a focus for cooperation and the achievement of common goals, there is a very real risk that we will enter an ever-tightening spiral of poverty, whose social, economic and environmental consequences will threaten the fabric of society. In contrast, if we can attain an equitable balance between the demands we make for the services and goods that we derive from the use of water, and our ability to exercise our custodianship of water, we will be able to achieve a far more harmonious and sustainable situation. However, to achieve this, all our policies and strategies concerning water must be guided by the values of sustainability, equity, mutual cooperation, and the attainment of optimal benefit for society (34).
While water stress occurs throughout the world, no region has been more afflicted than sub-Saharan Africa. The crisis in Darfur stems in part from disputes over water: The conflict that led to the crisis arose from tensions between nomadic farming groups who were competing for water and grazing land—both increasingly scarce due to the expanding Sahara Desert. As Mark Giordano of the International Water Management Institute in Colombo Sri Lanka says, "Most water extracted for development in sub-Saharan Africa—drinking water, livestock watering, irrigation—is at least in some sense 'transboundary'." Because water sources are often cross-border, conflict emerges.
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Multiple scenarios exist for conflict inAfrica– lack of water will cause these conflicts to escalate to war. Solomon, research manager at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, 1998 (Hussein, “From the Cold War to Water Wars: Some reflections of the changing global security agenda- A view from the South”, http://www.wca-infonet.org/servlet/BinaryDownloaderServlet?filename=1070020014294_WAR.pdf&refID=125884)
The changes in the theoretical discourse, of course, reflected the tectonic shifts in the post-Cold War global security landscape. Freed from the straitjacket of global bipolarity, international politics is following a more turbulent trajectory. Nowhere is the saliency of this observation more clearly reflected than in the area of resource-based conflict. One such potential conflict area is scarce fresh water resources. That this is so is hardly surprising. Within the context of the developing world, water availability determines the sustainability of economic development. According to Anthony Turton even in countries where the industrial sector is weak, water consumption in the agricultural sector can be as much as 80 percent. Thus within the context of the South, water security does not simply translate into economic development but also food security and the very survival of states and their citizens. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the World Commission on the Environment and Development (WCED) has concluded that such resource conflicts “… are likely to increase as the resources become scarcer and competition over them increases”. It has been estimated that over 1,7 billion people spread over eighty countries are suffering water shortages. Available evidence also suggest that such water shortages, and conflicts over water, will intensify over the coming years. Various reasons account for this. Firstly, greater levels of pollution of our existing fresh water resources as a result of the intensification of industrialisation in the South where environmental standards tend to be weak or not implemented. Second, as a result of population growth with its concomitant increase in demand for more water. Consider the following in this regard: The world’s population stood at 5,3 billion in 1990, is expected to pass the 6,2 billion mark this year and reach 8,5 billion by the year 2025. The twist in the tale lies in the fact that those population growth levels are fundamentally uneven. Little of the projected population growth will take place in the North. The developed industrialised states’ share of the world’s population is decreasing dramatically. In 1950 it was 22 percent, 15 percent in 1985, and is projected to be a minuscule 5 percent by the year 2085. Conversely, much of the projected population growth will take place in the countries of the South. For instance, Ethiopia’s population is expected to increase from 47 million in 1990 to 112 million by 2025; Nigeria’s from 113 million to 301 million; Bangladesh’s from 116 million to 235 million; and India’s from 853 million to 1,446 million4. The ramification of this is the further escalation of conflict potential over scarce water resources in the developing world. A third and relatively recent factor contributing to water scarcity is the impact of the El Nino/ Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon that causes dry conditions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa5. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a report of the African Development Bank concluded as follows: “Current calculations are that by 2000,South Africawill suffer water stress,Malawiwill have moved into absolute water scarcity andKenyawill be facing the prospect of living beyond the present water barrier. By 2025,Mozambique,TanzaniaandZimbabwewill suffer water stress,LesothoandSouth Africawill have moved into absolute water scarcity, andMalawiwill have joinedKenyaliving beyond the present water barrier … Competition for scarce water resources will intensify”. This competition for scarce water resources takes on ominous proportions if one considers that of the 200 first-order river systems, 150 are shared by 2 nations; and 50 by 10 nations all in all supporting approximately 40 percent of the world’s population, two-thirds of whom are located in developing countries. Indeed, conflicts over scarce fresh waters have already occurred. Consider here those conflicts between: • Turkey, Syria and Iraq around the waters of the Euphrates river; • The dispute betweenEgyptandEthiopiaover the waters of the Nile; • The tensions concerning the sharing of the waters of the Colorado river between the United States and Mexico; and • The dispute betweenBotswanaandNamibiaover the waters of theOkavangoDelta. The above, of course, should not lead one to the erroneous conclusion that water scarcity equals armed conflict as if nothing can be done about the situation. Various measures can be implemented at various levels to ameliorate tensions arising from water scarcity.
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African war will draw in outside powers and lead to nuclear war. Duetsch, PhD. Political Science and Economics George Mason University, 2k2 (Jeff, “The Nuclear Family Has Become Overextended,” The Rabid Tiger News Letter, volume 2, No. 9, http://list.webengr.com/pipermail/picoipo/2002-November/000208.html)
The Rabid Tiger Project believes that a nuclear war is most likely to start in Africa. Civil wars in the Congo (the country formerly known as Zaire), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone, and domestic instability in Zimbabwe, Sudan and other countries, as well as occasional brushfire and other wars (thanks in part to "national" borders that cut across tribal ones) turn into a really nasty stew. We've got all too many rabid tigers and potential rabid tigers, who are willing to push the button rather than risk being seen as wishy-washy in the face of a mortal threat and overthrown. Geopolitically speaking, Africa is open range. Very few countries in Africa are beholden to any particular power. South Africa is a major exception in this respect - not to mention in that she also probably already has the Bomb. Thus, outside powers can more easily find client states there than, say, in Europe where the political lines have long since been drawn, or Asia where many of the countries (China, India, Japan) are powers unto themselves and don't need any "help," thank you. Thus, an African war can attract outside involvement very quickly. Of course, a proxy war alone may not induce the Great Powers to fight each other. But an African nuclear strike can ignite a much broader conflagration, if the other powers are interested in a fight. Certainly, such a strike would in the first place have been facilitated by outside help - financial, scientific, engineering, etc. Africa is an ocean of troubled waters, and some people love to go fishing. Asia is a close second, due to the competition of major powers. For example, in an Indo-Paki confrontation, China may be tempted to side with Pakistan, since China and India are major nuclear powers sharing a long border. However, the Asian powers are basically stable internally, at least for now. The things to watch for are domestic economic and political instability in a nuclear power, the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries and new national antagonisms and great-power ties either weak or nonexistent enough to enable opportunistic alliances and destabilization, or strong enough that the great powers feel compelled to follow their client states.
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Observation Three – Hegemony
TheUS’ image is declining globally. Lobe, bureau chief of theWashingtonIPS, 6/27/07 (Jim, “POLITICS: U.S. Image Abroad Still Sinking”, http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38346)
Consistent with its performance since at least 2002, the global image of the United States sank further over the past year, particularly among predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP) survey released here Wednesday. The survey, which included more than 45,000 respondents interviewed in 46 countries and the Palestinian Territories (PT) during April and early May, found that the U.S. retains great popularity (roughly two-thirds or more rate it favourably) only in Israel and most of sub-Saharan Africa. But its standing among its western European allies, most of Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, as well as the Islamic world and most Asia, including China, has continued to fall, particularly compared to five years ago on the eve of its invasion of Iraq, according to the survey. At the same time, the latest survey, the sixth undertaken by Pew since 2000, found that global attitudes towards other major powers, particularly Russia, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, China, have also become more negative. Foreign confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin "to do the right thing regarding world affairs," for example, has fallen nearly to the same low levels as U.S. President George W. Bush in many countries, particularly in Western Europe, the survey found. "The major powers are not respected; their leaders are not respected," said former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who co-chairs GAP along with Bush's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth. She noted that two challengers to the current international system -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who were also the subject of the survey -- also fared poorly. Attitudes towards the United Nations and the European Union were significantly more positive, although they varied widely from region to region. Majorities in 33 of the 47 countries surveyed said they had favourable views of both institutions, with Africa the most positive and the Middle East the least. The rest of the world offered more mixed assessments. Overall, the survey also found a sharp rise in global concern -- led by Brazil, Argentina, France, Venezuela, Peru and Germany -- about environmental threats to the planet compared to five years ago. Pluralities or majorities in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, including China (70 percent), rated the environment as one of the two most important threats facing the world. In 34 of the 37 countries surveyed on the question, the U.S. was named either by a majority or a clear plurality as the country that is "hurting the world's environment the most", while China was the second-most frequently named country as the source of environmental problems. In Sub-Saharan Africa, majorities in all but one of the 10 surveyed countries rated HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases as the top global threat, while in the Middle East, the most-often-cited threats were nuclear proliferation and religious and ethnic hatred. Concern about the growing divide between rich and poor nations was also cited more frequently as a major threat in most regions than in previous surveys. Majorities or pluralities in most countries said they believed U.S. policies increased the gap. The continuing decline in Washington's standing was reflected not only in the belief that it bore most responsibility for environmental threats and the rich-poor gap, but also in growing disapproval for the Bush administration's most prominent foreign policy commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the survey. From 50 percent (Britain and South Africa) to 93 percent (PT) in 43 of 47 countries said the U.S. should withdraw its troops from Iraq, while majorities in 32 countries, including of 80 percent or more in Argentina, Egypt, PT, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and China, said NATO should leave Afghanistan. In 30 out of 34 countries that were polled on the question in 2002, as well as 2007, support for Washington's global war on terror has dropped, particularly in Europe. Even in countries that have experienced terrorist attacks in recent years, including Indonesia, Bangladesh, Spain, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, majorities say they oppose the U.S. campaign. Throughout the Islamic world (with the exception of Pakistan), majorities ranging from 55 percent in Malaysia and Bangladesh to 91 percent in Jordan criticised U.S. policy in the Middle East for favouring Israel "too much". Majorities in France, Germany, and Sweden and clear pluralities in Britain, Canada, South Korea and even Israel itself -- a finding Danforth called a "broadside" against current U.S. policy -- took the same position. Majorities in 30 of 46 countries -- mostly in the Middle East and Europe -- said they believed that Washington tended to act unilaterally in foreign affairs without taking the interests of their countries into account. That view was most strongly held (74 percent or more) by respondents in Sweden, Britain France, Spain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, PT, and South Korea. At the other end of the spectrum, 74 of Israelis said they believed Washington took account of their interests either a "great deal" or a "fair amount". Washington also received high marks on the same subject from Nigeria, Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire, and India. The survey found that the balance of opinion toward China remains favourable in 27 of the 47 countries overall, particularly among a number of its Asian neighbours, notably Malaysia (83 percent favourable), Pakistan (79 percent), Bangladesh (74 percent), and Indonesia (65 percent), and much of sub-Saharan Africa where Beijing's economic investment has grown rapidly. Nonetheless, the survey found double-digit declines over the last several years in its favourability ratings in most of Western Europe, South Korea, Turkey, and Japan. The survey found particularly great concern over China's growing military power in South Korea, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, and Germany. At the same time, both Latin American and African respondents said that China's influence on their region was more positive than U.S. influence.
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Scenario One – Soft Power
Absent more funding to addressAfrica, the goal of the Act will not be recognized and water assistance will simply be pushed aside on the agenda. Lochery, CARE Water Team Director, 5/16/07 (Peter, “Beyond the Status Quo: Bringing Down Barriers to Water and Sanitation Provision in Africa through Implementation of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act”, http://www.care.org/newsroom/articles/2007/05/lochery_water_testimony.pdf)
The information presented in the Report revealed that in FY 2005, a bulk of US funding went to countries and regions of strategic interest (like Afghanistan, Iraq, and the West Bank and Gaza), while only roughly $15 million in sustainable water supply and sanitation funding went to sub-Saharan Africa, indisputably one of the areas of greatest need. The Report also counted the amount spent in the emergency sector--which, depending on how you count, receives over 50% of total funding--toward what the US is spending on water and sanitation. While funding relief efforts is essential to saving lives, and an activity that the US should continue to invest in, emergency spending will only go so far in addressing the issue of sustainable access to safe water and sanitation, particularly when there are limited funds for the transition from relief to development. There is no substitute to increasing funding for developmental water and sanitation, which is why the Water for the Poor Act explicitly called for theUSto help “expand access to safe water and sanitation in an affordable, equitable, and sustainable manner.” The facts that have come to light with the release of the first State Department Water for the Poor Act Report indicate that US funding must be significantly increased to fill the gaps in addressing the water and sanitation needs ofAfricaand other under-served areas. Furthermore, they underscore the need to elevate water and sanitation as an explicit priority in order to truly realize the vision incorporated in the legislation.
Water assistance increases our soft power and allows us to accomplish our foreign policy objectives. CSIS, Sept. 30 2005 (Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Addressing Our Global Water Future” http://water.csis.org/050928_ogwf.pdf)
It is clear that water scarcity, water quality, and water management will affect almost every major U.S. strategic priority in every key region of the world. Addressing the world’s water needs will go well beyond humanitarian and economic development interests. Virtually every major U.S. foreign policy objective—promoting stability and security, reducing extremist violence, democracy building, post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction, poverty reduction, meeting the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, combating HIV/AIDS, promoting bilateral and multilateral relationships—will be contingent to some extent on how well the challenge of global water can be addressed. Because water is so integral to human life, many strategies to promote economic development or humanitarian relief (e.g., poverty reduction or HIV/AIDS relief) cannot be achieved without a recognized water component. Water projects can also strengthen democracy-building projects in areas where such projects are not well-received by fostering inclusive decision making and management processes at a local scale. A review of most post-conflict or unstable areas will demonstrate that water should be a key component in any short-term or long-term regional stabilization and reconstruction effort. Water also has significant implications for U.S. international economic policy. It is a key driver of economic stability and prosperity in a number of important regions across the world. As previously discussed, water has structural linkages with the agricultural, energy and industrial/manufacturing sectors and its availability and quality are therefore critical to prospects for growth and stability. Conversely, if the challenge of access and quality worsens, water could contribute to economic and financial instability and uncertainty. While the debate over water as a potential cause for war in the future continues, the fact remains that water scarcity and poor water quality are destabilizing forces that impact both economic and social stability. Facilitating cooperative arrangements over shared water resources not only diminishes these disruptive forces but also provides avenues for cooperation and political development in other spheres.
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Specifically our soft power inAfricaallows us to establishes bases there which is key to sustain hegemony and combat asymmetric threats. Hall, Colonel in the USAF andUSJoint forces command, 2003 (Brian, “Air Expeditionary Access The African Connection”, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/fal03/hall.html#hall)
The NSS notes that, "together with our European allies, we must help strengthen Africa’s fragile states, help build indigenous capability to secure porous borders, and help build up the law enforcement and intelligence infrastructure to deny havens for terrorists."4 We cannot realize these goals without significant power projection and sustainment to a continent of immense size and diversity. The US/ African regional-security strategy must respect multilateral alliances while preparing bilateral engagements that build confidence and strengthen assured access. The administration of President George W. Bush clearly recognizes that it must focus its attention on South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia as anchor states for regional-security cooperation. Yet, other regional players also deserve recognition for maintaining good governance and implementing responsible, democratic political systems- namely Ghana, Gabon, Mali, and Senegal. The administration’s policy towards regional-security cooperation recognizes these states, as it does the entire Sahel. Indeed, the Pan-Sahel Initiative is the most recent cooperative effort spun off from the global war on terrorism.5 Budding democracies have granted US requests for access to counter emerging crises. We will need assured access to shore up rapid response once conflict flares, as it has recently in Liberia and numerous times in Africa over the last decade. Striving to balance global power as it develops new national-security strategies, the United States finds itself in a unique hegemonic position. From a classic political perspective, this is not necessarily bad because if one nation dominates the international arena with overwhelming power, peace and stability reign since there is little point in declaring war against such a state. Political scientist Robert Gilpin has argued that "Pax Britannica and Pax Americana, like Pax Romana, ensured an international system of relative peace and security."6 Unlike the Britain of the past, which controlled a global empire, America possesses a large, self-sustaining home economy and has the ability to project great soft power (the art of diplomacy, transparent military cooperation, and economic reform) to all corners of the globe. Thus, the United States is more apt to send food and medical supplies than a man-of-war to Africa. Power projection and access go hand in hand. In this article, air expedition becomes the means of power projection, and access is its enabler. But one has to peel back the discussion of national power another layer or two to adequately portray the type of power best suited to project towards Africa. Of course, the United States must always be prepared to exercise both military and economic hard power to induce other parties to change their positions. Major force deployments and economic sanctions are two examples of the compelling projection of hard power, which is relatively easy to use when access is predictable and overseas presence extensive. A large, permanent US presence and investment (military and economic) in Europe, the Pacific, and the Middle East demonstrate America’s willingness to use hard power. But one can exercise power indirectly: that is, a country can obtain desired outcomes in world politics because other countries admire its values, emulate its example, aspire to its level of prosperity and openness, and therefore want to follow it.7 Soft power is more than persuasion or the ability to move people by argument.8 The United States would be in dire straits if it lost the ability to shape the international landscape by credibly
projecting hard and soft power. America’s hegemony comes into play less often when its soft power is strong and associated with the tenets of benevolence and human dignity. Africa is ripe for soft-power engagement. Great hard-power resources, such as those invested in the Middle East, Europe, and the Pacific, are not needed in Africa. Soft-power projection will go a long way towards securing vital American interests. Credible projectors of soft power include Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, each of which has political clout that vastly exceeds its military and economic weight. All four nations incorporate attractive soft implements such as economic aid and peacekeeping assets into their definition of national interests, thereby negating the necessity for costly hard power. Limited objectives allow for exclusive soft-power foreign policies. Interestingly, governments are not the only wielders of soft power. US industries and NGOs develop their own soft power, which might either complement or compete with official foreign policy. But there is no room for friction between players when scarce resources are better applied by collaborative efforts that assure widespread access- a classic, symbiotic soft-power relationship. In Africa, competing unilateral efforts tend not to survive. From the onset, complementary private and public cooperation has a greater impact and longer-lasting effects. For that reason, the US military plays a substantial role in transporting, distributing, and supporting the wares of many NGOs and official government programs. There are ways to assure that all US interests in Africa are safely supportable and, if necessary, introduced in-theater via expeditionary, global-mobility, and rapid-response task forces. Little difference exists in the planning, executing, and sustaining of air expeditionary task forces for other-than-major conflicts. Although their scope and character are vastly different, the strength of air expeditionary task forces lies in the transformational capabilities of each. In Africa, the potential for rapid global mobility and agile combat support (ACS), reinforced with distributed command and control capabilities, is perfect for future area operations. Air expeditionary forces (most likely part of a joint task force) will rapidly move, position, and sustain these forces. Rapid global mobility
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demonstrates an improved ability to support operations with a smaller force and footprint while transiting distances in minimum time. ACS, which begins well before deployment, provides many capabilities crucial to successful beddown and sustainment, including readying the force; assessing,
planning, and posturing for employment; tailoring and preparing for movement, deployment, and reception; employing effectively; and sustaining appropriate levels of support for theater operations.9 Although these concepts and capabilities sound promising, nonstate entities preparing for conflict with the United States will seek to capitalize on the great distances US forces must travel to engage them. Those evasive enemies realize all too well the near-absolute reliance of the United States on unimpeded access to and use of airfields and bases in the potential theater of conflict.10 In today’s environment of crisis action, quickly getting in-theater is as important as what one does after forces arrive. The Bush administration’s greatest concern for the projection of military power to Africa is establishing select sites that form the greatest foothold once the boots hit the ground.
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Scenario Two –China
China’s increasing influence inAfricais fueling its rise to global power. Chau, Adjunct faculty member in Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, 2007, Strategic Studies Institute (Donovan, “POLITICAL WARFARE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: U.S. CAPABILITIES AND CHINESE OPERATIONS IN ETHIOPIA, KENYA, NIGERIA, AND SOUTH AFRICA”, March, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub766.pdf)
PRC political warfare operations followed a similar pattern in all four African countries. But did the PRC achieve the central objective of its grand strategy? The PRC had a mission, and it set out to achieve it.205 The PRC sought—and continues to seek—to become a global power. It seeks to exercise predominant influence over Africa—its governments and people—and eliminate Western influence. In all four countries, the PRC demonstrated that it was able to gain access to and influence the affairs of the African governments, businesses, and communities using political warfare. By exerting greater influence in each African country, Beijing was successful in furthering the central objective of its grand strategy—to become a global power. Since 2000, the PRC has enhanced its bilateral political, military, and economic relations with the African countries; it has gained further access to natural resources, particularly in Ethiopia and Nigeria; and it has received greater respect from the African businesses and communities. Political warfare, one instrument of grand strategy, was essential to Beijing’s success. The cases also demonstrate that the PRC intentionally targeted African countries that were deemed crucial to U.S. Africa policy, also recognizing their geopolitical importance to influencing the African continent as whole. Prior to 2000, the PRC was not influential in the four anchor countries. Today, it exerts influence in each country and is perceived as a global power by the local peoples and governments. Political warfare was crucial to Beijing’s achievement of this position of prominence.
China’s influence is growing in Africa due to lack of US influence – it’s zero-sum.
Lovelace, director of the Strategic Studies Institute, 2007 (Douglas, Forward to “Political Warfare in Sub-Saharan Africa”, March)
Africa today has emerged as a continent of strategic consequence. Domestic and international terrorism aside, the two great powers of our time, the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), are vying for influence over African governments and people. Not unlike the Cold War, the primary means of exerting influence in Africa is through the use of non-violent instruments of grand strategy. In this monograph, Dr. Donovan Chau considers one nonviolent instrument of grand strategy in particular, political warfare. Retracing the origins and mischaracterizations of political warfare, Dr. Chau suggests that the PRC has used political warfare as its leading grand strategic instrument in Africa. The monograph offers a concise, detailed overview of U.S. capabilities to conduct political warfare in Africa. It then examines PRC political warfare operations in four regional “anchor” states—Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. What emerges from Dr. Chau’s analyses is the Chinese use of political warfare intentionally targeting U.S. interests in Africa. Unless the U.S. Government recognizes the utility of political warfare and reorients the federal bureaucracy to employ it effectively, he intimates that future U.S. influence in Africa will wane— to the benefit of a country that understands political warfare and uses it seriously.
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US water assistance uniquely increases US influence.
Petersen, CSIS, 2007 (Erik, “Below the Surface: U.S. International Water Policy”, Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 19th, http://forums.csis.org/gsi/?p=384)
As we scan the more distant time horizons, the dimensions of the water challenge will probably increase significantly. If you superimpose projections for rapid population growth on a map of the world, it will likely occur in those areas of the world that are already the most distressed when it comes to water. What are the two areas of the world forecast to have the highest population growth out to the middle of the century? Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. As monumental as the challenges are in those two regions, they do not stop there. Water looms large as a critical catalyst to—or constraint on—development in countries from China to Chile, India to Indonesia, Russia to Rwanda. By 2025, according to the United Nations, it is possible that more than 2.5 billion people will live in countries experiencing serious water stress. The aggregate numbers could rise even further if the effects of global warming and broader environmental degradation persist, as expected. For all these reasons, one would think that water would be a central component inU.S.foreign policy. Targeting water as an instrument of Washington's engagement with the rest of the world would enable policymakers to assist with humanitarian relief, strengthen human health, support other public health commitments(such as efforts to address HIV/AIDS), promote economic development, advance opportunities for girls and women, and improve the capacity of countries to protect themselves against drought, on the one hand, or floods, on the other. Furthermore, it would imply important commercial opportunities for U.S.-domiciled corporations working in water-related technologies and processes. Targeting water would also yield other geopolitical dividends—including removing what is a serious obstacle to stability and security within states and reducing the possibility for conflict or tension between countries with shared water resources. Finally, water represents an avenue for theUnited Statesto demonstrate leadership in the world at a time when its image has eroded so considerably.In short, a water-centered set of policies could represent a remarkable opportunity for theUnited Statesto "do good" while "doing well" when it comes to pursuing its own interests in the world. If that’s the theory, then the reality becomes all the more difficult to comprehend. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), U.S. official development assistance commitments for water supply and sanitation in 1999-2000 amounted to less than two percent ($165m) of total national assistance—the lowest (with New Zealand) of any OECD member state.1 By 2003-2004 the U.S. level had grown to $521m, according to the same OECD statistics, but the lion’s share of the rise was attributable to increased financial assistance directed to Iraq—and even at that level, total assistance was well below the corresponding level for Japan, the OECD leader in water spending. Of the water-relatedU.S.support not channeled intoIraq, moreover, a disproportionate percentage was allocated to the Middle East and not to regions such as sub-SaharanAfricawhere the problems are the greatest. In other words, politics are trumping need. Le plus ça change...
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Chinese perceptions of containment are inevitable – preventingChinafrom becoming a global power is key to prevent massive transition wars and a collapse of hegemony. Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005,WashingtonPost (Robert, “The Illusion of ‘Managing’ China”, lexis)
The history of rising powers, however, and their attempted "management" by established powers provides little reason for confidence or comfort. Rarely have rising powers risen without sparking a major war that reshaped the international system to reflect new realities of power. The most successful "management" of a rising power in the modern era was Britain's appeasement of the United States in the late 19th century, when the British effectively ceded the entire Western Hemisphere (except Canada) to the expansive Americans. The fact that both powers shared a common liberal, democratic ideology, and thus roughly consonant ideas of international order, greatly lessened the risk of accommodation from the British point of view. Other examples are less encouraging. Germany's rise after 1870, and Europe's reaction to it, eventually produced World War I. Even the masterly Bismarck, after a decade of successful German self-management, had a difficult time steering Europe away from collision. The British tried containment, appeasement and even offers of alliance, but never fully comprehended Kaiser Wilhelm's need to challenge the British supremacy he both admired and envied. Right up until the eve of war, highly regarded observers of the European scene believed commercial ties among the leading powers made war between them unlikely, if not impossible. Japan's rise after 1868 produced two rounds of warfare -- first with China and Russia at the turn of the century, and later with the United States and Britain in World War II. The initial Anglo-American response to Japan's growing power was actually quite accommodating. Meiji Japan had chosen the path of modernization and even Westernization, or so it seemed, and Americans welcomed its ascendancy over backward China and despotic Russia. Then, too, there was the paternalistic hope of assisting Japan's entry into the international system, which was to say the Western system. "The Japs have played our game," Theodore Roosevelt believed, and only occasionally did he wonder whether "the Japanese down at bottom did not lump Russians, English, Americans, Germans, all of us, simply as white devils inferior to themselves . . . and to be treated politely only so long as would enable the Japanese to take advantage of our national jealousies, and beat us in turn." Today we look back at those failures and ruminate on the mistakes made with the usual condescension that the present has for the past. But there is no reason to believe we are any smarter today than the policymakers who "mismanaged" the rise of Germany and Japan. The majority of today's policymakers and thinkers hold much the same general view of global affairs as their forebears: namely, that commercial ties between China and the other powers, especially with Japan and the United States, and also with Taiwan, will act as a buffer against aggressive impulses and ultimately ease China's "integration" into the international system without war. Once again we see an Asian power modernizing and believe this should be a force for peace. And we add to this the conviction, also common throughout history, that if we do nothing to provoke China, then it will be peaceful, without realizing that it may be the existing international system that the Chinese find provocative. The security structures of East Asia, the Western liberal values that so dominate our thinking, the "liberal world order" we favor -- this is the "international system" into which we would "integrate" China. But isn't it possible that China does not want to be integrated into a political and security system that it had no part in shaping and that conforms neither to its ambitions nor to its own autocratic and hierarchical principles of rule? Might not China, like all rising powers of the past, including the United States, want to reshape the international system to suit its own purposes, commensurate with its new power, and to make the world safe for its autocracy? Yes, the Chinese want the prosperity that comes from integration in the global economy, but might they believe, as the Japanese did a century ago, that the purpose of getting rich is not to join the international system but to change it? We may not know the answers to these questions. But we need to understand that the nature of China's rise will be determined largely by the Chinese and not by us. The Chinese leadership may already believe the United States is its enemy, for instance, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Partly this is due to our actions -- such as the strengthening of the U.S.-Japanese military alliance, which began during the Clinton administration, and our recent efforts to enhance strategic ties with India. Partly it is due to our different forms of government, since autocratic rulers naturally feel threatened by a democratic superpower and its democratic allies around their periphery. Partly it is due to the nature of the situation in East Asia. It used to be an article of faith among Sinologists that the Chinese did not want to drive the United States out of the region. Today many are not so sure. It would not be unusual if an increasingly powerful China wanted to become the dominant power in its own region, and dominant not just economically but in all other respects, as well. When one contemplates how to "manage" that, however, comforting notions of gradualness, predictability and time begin to fade. The obvious choices would seem to lie between ceding American predominance in the region and taking steps to contain China's understandable ambitions. Not many Americans favor the former course, and for sound political, moral and strategic reasons. But let's not kid ourselves. It will be hard to pursue the latter course without treating China as at least a prospective enemy, and not just 20 years from now, but now. Nor, if that is the choice, can Chinese leaders be expected to wait patiently while the web of containment is strengthened around them. More likely, they will periodically want to challenge both the United States and its allies in the region to back off. Crises could come sooner than expected, and without much warning, requiring difficult judgments about the risks and rewards of both action and inaction. That is likely what the future holds. The United States may not be able to avoid a policy of containing China; we are, in fact, already doing so. This is a sufficiently unsettling prospect, however, that we are doing all we can to avoid thinking about it. We conjure hopeful images of a modernizing China that seeks only economic growth and would do nothing to threaten commercial ties with us -- unless provoked -- even as we watch nervously the small but steady Chinese military buildup, the periodic eruptions of popular nationalism, the signs of Chinese confidence intermingled with
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feelings of historical injustice and the desire to right old wrongs. Which China is it? A 21st-century power that wants to be integrated into a liberal international order, which would mean both a transformation of its own polity and a limitation of its strategic ambitions? Or a 19th-century power that wants to preserve its rule at home and expand its reach abroad? It is a worthy subject for debate, because the answer will determine the future as much as or more than anything we do. But it is unlikely we will have a definitive answer in time to adjust, to "manage" China's "rise," any more than our predecessors did. As in the past, we will have to peer into the fog and make prudent judgments, informed by the many tragic lessons of history.
There is no alternative toUShegemony – collapse will cause a global power vacuum resulting in worldwide atrocities, ending in extinction. Ferguson – Professor of History at New York University's Stern School of Business and Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution – 2004
[Niall, “A world without power,” Foreign Policy 143, p. 32-39, July-August]
<So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous--roughly 20 times more--so friction between the world's disparate "tribes" is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now possible not just to sack a city but to oblmiterate it. For more than two decades, globalization--the integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital--has raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalization--which a new Dark Age would produce--would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over theMiddle Eastto the breaking point. An economic meltdown inChinawould plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy--from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai--would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in theMiddle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. InAfrica, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should frighten us today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If theUnited Statesretreats from global hegemony--its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier--its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity--a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder.>
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Finally, they can’t win an impact – war and instability can only occur absentUSprimacy, and collapse of hege would collapse the entire liberal order upon which civilization rests. Thayer, 2006 (Bradley, prof. of security studies at Missouri State, The National Interest, “In Defense of Primacy”, November/December, p. 32-37)
A grand strategy based on American primacy means ensuring the United States stays the world's number one power--the diplomatic, economic and military leader. Those arguing against primacy claim that the United States should retrench, either because the United States lacks the power to maintain its primacy and should withdraw from its global commitments, or because the maintenance of primacy will lead the United States into the trap of "imperial overstretch." In the previous issue of The National Interest, Christopher Layne warned of these dangers of primacy and called for retrenchment.1 Those arguing for a grand strategy of retrenchment are a diverse lot. They include isolationists, who want no foreign military commitments; selective engagers, who want U.S. military commitments to centers of economic might; and offshore balancers, who want a modified form of selective engagement that would have the United States abandon its landpower presence abroad in favor of relying on airpower and seapower to defend its interests. But retrenchment, in any of its guises, must be avoided. If the United States adopted such a strategy, it would be a profound strategic mistake that would lead to far greater instability and war in the world, imperil American security and deny the United States and its allies the benefits of primacy. There are two critical issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the dominant state? Should it strive to do this? America can remain dominant due to its prodigious military, economic and soft power capabilities. The totality of that equation of power answers the first issue. The United States has overwhelming military capabilities and wealth in comparison to other states or likely potential alliances. Barring some disaster or tremendous folly, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. With few exceptions, even those who advocate retrenchment acknowledge this. So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining American primacy. Proponents of retrenchment focus a great deal on the costs of U.S. action--but they fail to realize what is good about American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every day; the benefits that stem from it are not. A GRAND strategy of ensuring American primacy takes as its starting point the protection of the U.S. homeland and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary regimes flourish and that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to the United States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or the Australians in East Timor. In contrast, a strategy based on retrenchment will not be able to achieve these fundamental objectives of the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United States less secure than the present grand strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no matter what role America chooses to play in international politics. Washington cannot call a "time out", and it cannot hide from threats. Whether they are terrorists, rogue states or rising powers, history shows that threats must be confronted. Simply by declaring that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or making unconvincing half-pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weakness and emboldens aggression. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront the strong. The same is true of the anarchic world of international politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats that confront the United States, then the conventional and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats. And when enemies must be confronted, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies overseas, away from American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks against the United States itself. This requires a physical, on-the-ground presence that cannot be achieved by offshore balancing. Indeed, as Barry Posen has noted, U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the "global commons"--the oceans, the world's airspace and outer space--allowing the United States to project its power far from its borders, while denying those common avenues to its enemies. As a consequence, the costs of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the robustness of the United States' conventional and strategic deterrent capabilities is increased.2 This is not an advantage that should be relinquished lightly. A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly and unambiguously on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes--their own protection, or to gain greater influence. Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this country, or any country, had so many allies. U.S. primacy--and the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to
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consistently resist the agenda and actions of the United States. China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will, if necessary, resort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communication and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates. The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases--Venezuela, Iran, Cuba--it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically anti-American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides. Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"--it serves, de facto, as the world's police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries in need. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces. American generosity has done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United States also provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg.
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Thus the plan;
TheUnited Statesfederal government should fund and implement the Water for the Poor Act for all topically defined areas. We’ll clarify.
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Observation Four – Solvency
Funding the Act could completely solve the water crisis within the decade. Natural Resource Defense Council, Jan 2007 (“Global Safe Water: Solving the World’s Most Pressing Environmental Health Problem”, http://www.nrdc.org/international/water/safewater.pdf)
U.S. Steps to Secure Safe Water by 2015 In 2005, Congress passed the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, which made the provision of safe water and sanitation a cornerstone ofU.S.foreign assistance by integrating water and sanitation into allU.S.development programs. The act requires the Secretary of State to develop a strategy to expand access to clean water for millions of people in the developing world to meet the UN’s 2015 target. But Congress has yet to designate any funds to implement the act, effectively crippling it. A Call for Congressional Action NRDC and other organizations are calling on Congress to fully fund the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act in 2007. The act presents an opportunity for the United States to not only to engage international organizations in targeting the places of greatest need, but also to provide permanent solutions to one of the world’s worst environmental health problems. Safe drinking water is an essential step for human health and economic development. With simple sanitation improvements and basic water treatment and delivery, the world’s largest environmental health crisis can be resolved in the next decade.
The Water for the Poor Act is key to rebuilding successful water infrastructure. HauterExecutive Director, Food & Water Watch. 2005. (Wenonah, “Water for the Poor Act of 2005” http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/right/poor-act)
U.S. policy is currently focused on policy, law, institutions, and operational strategies. The Water for the Poor Act necessitates a move to prioritize direct infrastructure investments, whether throughU.S.government departments or delegated projects carried out by civil society organizations. Policy and institution building alone will not fulfill the mission of the Water for the Poor Act or deliver affordable and equitable access. With the Water for the Poor Act, theUnited Statesmust step up and take a more active role in funding water infrastructure.
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The Water for the Poor Act is necessary to alleviate water stress and stabilize disparate countries. Kraus, executive CP of Citizens for Global Solutions, and Holt, Edward Rawson Fellow at Citizens for Global Solutions, 4/5/05 (Don and Dominic, “THICKER THAN BLOOD”, http://oldsite.globalsolutions.org/press_room/news/news_thicker_blood.html)
The Water for the Poor Act is significant for a number of reasons. To begin with, the bipartisan work of Sens. Bill Frist, R-Tenn. and Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Reps. Earl Blumenauer. D-Ore, James Leach, R-Iowa, and others, in introducing the act is a demonstration of how U.S. foreign policy once was, and how the American public would like it to be. Of equal significance, however, is that the legislation tackles, head on, one of the world’s worst problems: the global water crisis. Although relatively unknown in the Western world, the global water crisis represents a serious geopolitical and humanitarian quandary. Today, one child dies every 15 seconds from a water-related disease. That’s 3,000 to 5,000 children a day and up to 5 million young lives lost each year. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.2 billion people live their daily lives without access to clean water, and 2.4 billion people lack adequate sanitation. Reducing this number of needless victims could be accomplished by a greater commitment to foreign aid on the part of theUnited Statesand the developed world. This goal must be realized, especially when one considers the costs that lack of water and sanitation inflicts on an already-impoverished society. Solving the global water crisis is necessary for impoverished nations to stabilize, develop and avoid becoming breeding grounds for conflict and terrorism. According to the U.N. Task Force on Water and Sanitation, more than “half the people in the developing world are suffering from one or more of the main diseases associated with inadequate provision of water supply and sanitation.” With the majority of the population crippled by disease, faltering nations cannot keep the peace, provide education and jobs or develop economies—much less give hope to those already suffering.
Long-term data on water resources are essential for understanding historic and current impacts of human activities on water resources. In addition, historical data are important for projecting future trajectories of water resources from different scenarios of future population growth, consumption patterns and management strategies (See Smith et al. 1987, Spahr and Winn 1997, Passell et al. 2005). In most regions of the world, long-term data sets are patchy or unavailable. Datasets that do exist were often collected at different times, by different organizations, using different collection and analytical methods. Consequently, information on a single river or aquifer that crosses jurisdictional or political boundaries is not easily comparable. Further complicating crossborder management, data often are not shared among transboundary resource managers, either for political reasons or simply because data sharing mechanisms and agreements are not in place. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has pioneered and mastered long-term, whole-basin, remote data gathering technologies for the United States, including real-time river discharge, but similar programs in other countries and regions around the world are rare. Pioneering whole-basin, international, transboundary data collection and data sharing projects currently exists among four Central Asian nations in the Aral Sea Basin (Passell et al. 2002, Barber et al. 2005; http://ironside.sandia.gov/Central/centralasia.html), and among three nations in the South Caucasus (Armen Saghatelyan, National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Armenia, personal communication; http://www.kura-araksAddressing Our Global Water Future Page 92 Center for Strategic and International Studies Sandia National Laboratories natosfp.org/). These projects include stakeholder institutions from all the partner countries; standardized monitoring, data collection and analytical technologies; and data sharing websites open to project partners and the public. These projects allow whole-basin water quantity and quality analyses never possible before. As in many cases, technologies available for these kinds of projects around the world are available, but without comprehensive policy initiatives the projects themselves are few and far between.
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Observation Five – Framework
Our interpretation of debate is the impacts of the negative’s kritiks must be evaluated at an equal level with the affirmative impacts as specific consequences of political implementation. This is best:
Ground – they will always win their principles are better in the abstract; debating the merit of their arguments is only possible if they defend specific consequences of implementation.
Ignatieff, Carr prof. of human rights at Harvard, 2004 (Michael, Carr professor of human rights at Harvard, 2004 Lesser Evils p. 18-19)
As for moral perfectionism, this would be the doctrine that a liberal state should never have truck with dubious moral means and should spare its officials the hazard of having to decide between lesser and greater evils. A moral perfectionist position also holds that states can spare their officials this hazard simply by adhering to the universal moral standards set out in human rights conventions and the laws of war. There are two problems with a perfectionist stance, leaving aside the question of whether it is realistic. The first is that articulating nonrevocable, nonderogable moral standards is relatively easy. The problem is deciding how to apply them in specific cases. What is the line between interrogation and torture, between targeted killing and unlawful assassination, between preemption and aggression? Even when legal and moral distinctions between these are clear in the abstract, abstractions are less than helpful when political leaders have to choose between them in practice. Furthermore, the problem with perfectionist standards is that they contradict each other. The same person who shudders, rightly, at the prospect of torturing a suspect might be prepared to kill the same suspect in a preemptive attack on a terrorist base. Equally, the perfectionist commitment to the right to life might preclude such attacks altogether and restrict our response to judicial pursuit of offenders through process of law. Judicial responses to the problem of terror have their place, but they are no substitute for military operations when terrorists possess bases, training camps, and heavy weapons. To stick to a perfectionist commitment to the right to life when under terrorist attack might achieve moral consistency at the price of leaving us defenseless in the face of evildoers. Security, moreover, is a human right, and thus respect for one right might lead us to betray another.
Limits – there are limitless contexts through which the negative can advocate their position, making it impossible for us to debate them on it; fairness must preclude all consideration of their advocacy or else all contestation becomes meaningless.
Shively, Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M, 2K (Ruth Lessl, Political Theory and Partisan Politics, p. 181-2)
The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say "no" to—they must reject and limit—some ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say "yes" to some things. In particular, they must say "yes" to the idea of rational persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that agreement marks the end of contest—that consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect—if there is nothing at all left to question or contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrator's audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
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Education – by using the topic as a means to access their criticism they skirt debate over policymaking and are distrusting of pragmatic study and reform – even if they have good intentions, their message will only result in fascist totalitarianism.
Lewis, assistant prof. at George Washington University, 1992 [Martin, Green Delusions, p. 258]
A majority of those born between 1960 and 1980 seem to tend toward cynicism, and we can thus hardly expect them to be converted en masse to radical doctrines of social and environmental salvation by a few committed thinkers. It is actually possible that a radical education may make them even more cynical than they already are. While their professors may find the extreme relativism of subversive postmodernism bracingly liberating, many of today's students may embrace only the new creed's rejection of the past. Stripped of leftist social concerns, radical postmodernism's contempt for established social and political philosophy—indeed, its contempt for liberalism—may well lead to right-wing totalitarianism. When cynical, right-leaning students are taught that democracy is a sham and that all meaning derives from power, they are being schooled in fascism, regardless of their instructors' intentions. According to sociologist Jeffrey Goldfarb (1991), cynicism is the hallmark—and main defect—of the current age. He persuasively argues that cynicism's roots lie in failed left- and right-wing ideologies—systems of thought that deductively connect "a simple rationalized absolute truth ... to a totalized set of political actions and policies" (1991:82). Although most eco-radicals are anything but cynical when they imagine a "green future," they do take a cynical turn when contemplating the present political order. The dual cynical-ideological mode represents nothing less than the death of liberalism and of reform. Its dangers are eloquently spelled out by Goldfarb (1991:9): "When one thinks ideologically and acts ideologically, opponents become enemies to be vanquished, political compromise becomes a kind of immorality, and constitutional refinements become inconvenient niceties.
Vote Aff – restricting debate to arguments about consequences of policymaking is a revolutionary concept that reorients civic agency and invigorates social interdependence.
Gundersen, associate prof. of polisci at Texas A&M, 2K (Adolf G., Political Theory and Partisan Politics, p. 108-9)
Will deliberation work the same way among ordinary citizens? Yes and no. Yes, deliberation will tend to heighten citizens appreciation of their interdependence. At the same time, the results are likely to be analogous rather than identical to those in formal governmental bodies, since citizen deliberation must of course function in the absence of the institutional interdependence established by the US constitution, with its clear specification of joint responsibilities. The theoretical mutuality of interests assumed by the Constitution exists among ordinary citizens, too. The difference is that they have only their interests, not the impetus of divided power, to encourage them to discover and articulate them. Granted. But once they begin to do so, they are every bit as likely to succeed as the average representative. Citizen deliberation, in other words, will intensify citizens' appreciation of interdependence. Although I cannot prove the point, there are compelling reasons to think that citizen deliberation yields an awareness of overlapping interests. I have already alluded to the first, and perhaps most telling of these: if governors in a system of divided government such as our own succeed in deliberating their way to the public interest (however imperfectly or irregularly), surely ordinary citizens can be counted upon to do the same thing. Indeed, if my initial argument that decision-making spells the end of deliberation is on the mark, then we have good reason to expect citizens to deliberate better than their representatives. One can add to these theoretical considerations a lengthening list of empirical findings which suggest not only that citizens are willing and able to engage in political deliberation, but also that they are quite able to do so—able, that is, precisely in the sense of coming to a deeper appreciation of the collective nature of the problems they face (Dale et al. 1995; Gundersen 1995; Dryzek 1990; see also Gundersen n.d., chapter 4). In the end, the claim that deliberation enhances interdependence is hardly a radical one. After all, if deliberation will of itself diminish partisanship, as I started out by saying, it must at the same time enhance interdependence. To aim between Athens and Philadelphia requires, perhaps more than anything else, a changed way of thinking about partisanship. Institutions and ways of thinking tend to change together; hence if the institutional reorientation suggested here is to take root, it must be accompanied by a new way of thinking about partisanship. Shifting our appraisal of partisanship will amount to a nothing less than a new attitude toward politics. It will require that we aspire to something new, something that is at once less lofty (and less threatening) than the unity to which direct democracy is supposed to lead, but more democratic (and more deliberative) than encouraging political deliberation among a selected group of representatives. As I argued above, it will require that we seek to stimulate deliberation among all citizens. With Madison, we need to view partisanship as inevitable. Collective choice, indeed choice itself, is a partisan affair. But we also need to resist the equation of politics and partisanship. If politics is seen as nothing more than a clash of partisan interests, it is likely to stay at that level. Conversely, for deliberation to work, it must be seen as reasonable, if not all-illuminating—as efficacious, if not all-powerful. At the same time, of course, citizens must borrow a page from the participatory democrat's book by coming to view deliberation as their responsibility rather than something that is done only by others in city hall, the state capitol, or Congress—others who are, after all, under direct and constant pressure to act rather than deliberate. Politics, in other words, must be resuscitated as an allegiance to democratic deliberation.
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Observation One – Inherency
Africa has the greatest disparity in clean drinking water in the world – 40% of the African people lack access to safe water.
LaFraniere. NYT Journalist. 8/27/04. (Sharon, “Sub-Saharan Africa Lags in Water Cleanup” New York Times. Ebsco.)
Sub-Saharan Africa is lagging far behind the rest of the developing world in access to clean water, with more than 4 out of 10 people still relying on rivers, ponds or other unsafe sources of drinking water, according to a United Nations report issued Thursday. Although about 130 million more of the region's residents have gained access to clean water since 1990, the report states, governments are not moving quickly enough to meet the United Nations' goal of providing three-fourths of the population with safe drinking water by 2015. Only 58 percent of the 684 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have clean water, compared with an average of 79 percent for the entire developing world. The report attributes Africa's slow progress to conflict, political instability, population growth and the low priority that is given to water and sanitation by regional leaders. At least 30 percent of the region's water systems are inoperable because of age or disrepair, according to officials from Unicef, which issued the report with the World Health Organization.The rest of the world is mostly on track to meet the United Nations' targets for clean water, the report said. About 1.1 billion more people have clean water now than in 1990. Another 1.1 billion still lack it, most of them in Asia, home to more than half the world's population.
The Water for the Poor Act provides the ideal framework for giving water assistance to Africa; however lack of funding prevents its success and prevents us from mobilizing other countries.
Lochery, CARE Water Team Director, 5/16/07 (Peter, “Beyond the Status Quo: Bringing Down Barriers to Water and Sanitation Provision in Africa through Implementation of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act”, http://www.care.org/newsroom/articles/2007/05/lochery_water_testimony.pdf)
The Water for the Poor Act made the provision of safe water, sanitation, and hygiene an explicit objective of US foreign assistance and called for the State Department to develop a comprehensive strategy outlining how the US would go about expanding equitable access to water and sanitation in countries where the need is greatest. However, implementation of the Act has been limited and has not been backed by the increased appropriations required to realize the goals encompassed in it. The passage of the Water for the Poor Act presents an opportunity around which the US can bring expertise gained through programs in other regions of the world and significantly expanded funding to bear in sub-Saharan Africa. The strategy required by the Act also helps address gaps in responding to the African water crisis. These include: designating high priority recipient countries toward which funding should be targeted; determining which of those countries are truly committed to instituting the necessary reforms and enhancing accountability to their citizens; developing a system of measurable goals, benchmarks and timetables for monitoring US foreign assistance; and coordinating assistance with other donor countries. The US Government should also focus on complementary activities to strengthen civil societies’, governments’, and the media’s capacity to scrutinize their water and sanitation sector and demand that money be used appropriately and effectively. This capacity building will benefit not only the country receiving aid by ensuring that water and sanitation services are being delivered as they should be, but also the US as it will encourage the careful use of foreign assistance funds.
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Observation Two – Water Wars
Lack of a solution to the Africa water crisis makes water wars inevitable.
Peter J. Ashton, South African Institute of Ecologists and Environmental Scientists, water quality and water resources specialist CSIR, May 2002, (http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&issn=0044-7447&volume=031&issue=03&page=0236 )
In the light of the evidence already presented, it is clear that water conflicts in Africa will be inevitable if we do not prevent them from occurring. This somewhat simplistic statement is guided by the knowledge that Africa's freshwater resources are finite and cannot continue indefinitely to support the escalating demands that we make of them. If no actions are taken, competition for the available water supplies will continue to increase to a point where radical interventions will be required to avert conflict (8). Turton (28) has argued convincingly that water is most unlikely to be the direct cause of a "war" over water in Africa. Nevertheless, there is a distinct possibility that increasing demands for water could contribute to regional instability if the demands approach the limits of the available supplies and the "competing" societies are unable to adapt appropriately to this situation (8). Clearly, where more than one country or an entire region is involved in a dispute, a wide array of coping strategies and mechanisms can be deployed to resolve the problem. The presence of effective communication mechanisms and efficient institutional structures forms an extremely important component of all such strategies. The common-sense statement: "prevention is better than cure" provides a perfect outline of the goals and objectives that should direct our strategies and actions when we seek to deal with the complex issues of water-related conflicts. However, despite its apparent simplicity, this ideal often eludes us in practice (8). A large part of the reason for this lies in the diverse, and often contradictory, ways in which we attach value to water, and the ways in which we strive to derive both individual and collective benefit from our use of water. Too often our objectives have a short-term, local focus aimed at meeting objectives and solving problems today, rather than a far longer-term focus on the sustainable and equitable use of our water resources on a regional or continental scale (8, 17). If our demands for water outstrip our ability to manage water as a focus for cooperation and the achievement of common goals, there is a very real risk that we will enter an ever-tightening spiral of poverty, whose social, economic and environmental consequences will threaten the fabric of society. In contrast, if we can attain an equitable balance between the demands we make for the services and goods that we derive from the use of water, and our ability to exercise our custodianship of water, we will be able to achieve a far more harmonious and sustainable situation. However, to achieve this, all our policies and strategies concerning water must be guided by the values of sustainability, equity, mutual cooperation, and the attainment of optimal benefit for society (34).
This is not fanciful – the Darfur crisis resulted from water scarcity.
Tatlock, 2006(Water Stress in Sub-Saharan Africa, Author: Christopher W. TatlockAugust 7, 2006 http://www.cfr.org/publication/11240)
While water stress occurs throughout the world, no region has been more afflicted than sub-Saharan Africa. The crisis in Darfur stems in part from disputes over water: The conflict that led to the crisis arose from tensions between nomadic farming groups who were competing for water and grazing land—both increasingly scarce due to the expanding Sahara Desert. As Mark Giordano of the International Water Management Institute in Colombo Sri Lanka says, "Most water extracted for development in sub-Saharan Africa—drinking water, livestock watering, irrigation—is at least in some sense 'transboundary'." Because water sources are often cross-border, conflict emerges.
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Multiple scenarios exist for conflict in Africa – lack of water will cause these conflicts to escalate to war.
Solomon, research manager at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, 1998 (Hussein, “From the Cold War to Water Wars: Some reflections of the changing global security agenda- A view from the South”, http://www.wca-infonet.org/servlet/BinaryDownloaderServlet?filename=1070020014294_WAR.pdf&refID=125884)
The changes in the theoretical discourse, of course, reflected the tectonic shifts in the post-Cold War global security landscape. Freed from the straitjacket of global bipolarity, international politics is following a more turbulent trajectory. Nowhere is the saliency of this observation more clearly reflected than in the area of resource-based conflict. One such potential conflict area is scarce fresh water resources. That this is so is hardly surprising. Within the context of the developing world, water availability determines the sustainability of economic development. According to Anthony Turton even in countries where the industrial sector is weak, water consumption in the agricultural sector can be as much as 80 percent. Thus within the context of the South, water security does not simply translate into economic development but also food security and the very survival of states and their citizens. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the World Commission on the Environment and Development (WCED) has concluded that such resource conflicts “… are likely to increase as the resources become scarcer and competition over them increases”. It has been estimated that over 1,7 billion people spread over eighty countries are suffering water shortages. Available evidence also suggest that such water shortages, and conflicts over water, will intensify over the coming years. Various reasons account for this. Firstly, greater levels of pollution of our existing fresh water resources as a result of the intensification of industrialisation in the South where environmental standards tend to be weak or not implemented. Second, as a result of population growth with its concomitant increase in demand for more water. Consider the following in this regard: The world’s population stood at 5,3 billion in 1990, is expected to pass the 6,2 billion mark this year and reach 8,5 billion by the year 2025. The twist in the tale lies in the fact that those population growth levels are fundamentally uneven. Little of the projected population growth will take place in the North. The developed industrialised states’ share of the world’s population is decreasing dramatically. In 1950 it was 22 percent, 15 percent in 1985, and is projected to be a minuscule 5 percent by the year 2085. Conversely, much of the projected population growth will take place in the countries of the South. For instance, Ethiopia’s population is expected to increase from 47 million in 1990 to 112 million by 2025; Nigeria’s from 113 million to 301 million; Bangladesh’s from 116 million to 235 million; and India’s from 853 million to 1,446 million4. The ramification of this is the further escalation of conflict potential over scarce water resources in the developing world. A third and relatively recent factor contributing to water scarcity is the impact of the El Nino/ Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon that causes dry conditions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa5. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a report of the African Development Bank concluded as follows: “Current calculations are that by 2000, South Africa will suffer water stress, Malawi will have moved into absolute water scarcity and Kenya will be facing the prospect of living beyond the present water barrier. By 2025, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe will suffer water stress, Lesotho and South Africa will have moved into absolute water scarcity, and Malawi will have joined Kenya living beyond the present water barrier … Competition for scarce water resources will intensify”. This competition for scarce water resources takes on ominous proportions if one considers that of the 200 first-order river systems, 150 are shared by 2 nations; and 50 by 10 nations all in all supporting approximately 40 percent of the world’s population, two-thirds of whom are located in developing countries. Indeed, conflicts over scarce fresh waters have already occurred. Consider here those conflicts between: • Turkey, Syria and Iraq around the waters of the Euphrates river; • The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the waters of the Nile; • The tensions concerning the sharing of the waters of the Colorado river between the United States and Mexico; and • The dispute between Botswana and Namibia over the waters of the Okavango Delta. The above, of course, should not lead one to the erroneous conclusion that water scarcity equals armed conflict as if nothing can be done about the situation. Various measures can be implemented at various levels to ameliorate tensions arising from water scarcity.
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African war will draw in outside powers and lead to nuclear war.
Duetsch, PhD. Political Science and Economics George Mason University, 2k2 (Jeff, “The Nuclear Family Has Become Overextended,” The Rabid Tiger News Letter, volume 2, No. 9, http://list.webengr.com/pipermail/picoipo/2002-November/000208.html)
The Rabid Tiger Project believes that a nuclear war is most likely to start in Africa. Civil wars in the Congo (the country formerly known as Zaire), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone, and domestic instability in Zimbabwe, Sudan and other countries, as well as occasional brushfire and other wars (thanks in part to "national" borders that cut across tribal ones) turn into a really nasty stew. We've got all too many rabid tigers and potential rabid tigers, who are willing to push the button rather than risk being seen as wishy-washy in the face of a mortal threat and overthrown. Geopolitically speaking, Africa is open range. Very few countries in Africa are beholden to any particular power. South Africa is a major exception in this respect - not to mention in that she also probably already has the Bomb. Thus, outside powers can more easily find client states there than, say, in Europe where the political lines have long since been drawn, or Asia where many of the countries (China, India, Japan) are powers unto themselves and don't need any "help," thank you. Thus, an African war can attract outside involvement very quickly. Of course, a proxy war alone may not induce the Great Powers to fight each other. But an African nuclear strike can ignite a much broader conflagration, if the other powers are interested in a fight. Certainly, such a strike would in the first place have been facilitated by outside help - financial, scientific, engineering, etc. Africa is an ocean of troubled waters, and some people love to go fishing. Asia is a close second, due to the competition of major powers. For example, in an Indo-Paki confrontation, China may be tempted to side with Pakistan, since China and India are major nuclear powers sharing a long border. However, the Asian powers are basically stable internally, at least for now. The things to watch for are domestic economic and political instability in a nuclear power, the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries and new national antagonisms and great-power ties either weak or nonexistent enough to enable opportunistic alliances and destabilization, or strong enough that the great powers feel compelled to follow their client states.
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Observation Three – Hegemony
The US’ image is declining globally.
Lobe, bureau chief of the Washington IPS, 6/27/07 (Jim, “POLITICS: U.S. Image Abroad Still Sinking”, http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38346)
Consistent with its performance since at least 2002, the global image of the United States sank further over the past year, particularly among predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP) survey released here Wednesday. The survey, which included more than 45,000 respondents interviewed in 46 countries and the Palestinian Territories (PT) during April and early May, found that the U.S. retains great popularity (roughly two-thirds or more rate it favourably) only in Israel and most of sub-Saharan Africa. But its standing among its western European allies, most of Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, as well as the Islamic world and most Asia, including China, has continued to fall, particularly compared to five years ago on the eve of its invasion of Iraq, according to the survey. At the same time, the latest survey, the sixth undertaken by Pew since 2000, found that global attitudes towards other major powers, particularly Russia, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, China, have also become more negative. Foreign confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin "to do the right thing regarding world affairs," for example, has fallen nearly to the same low levels as U.S. President George W. Bush in many countries, particularly in Western Europe, the survey found. "The major powers are not respected; their leaders are not respected," said former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who co-chairs GAP along with Bush's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth. She noted that two challengers to the current international system -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who were also the subject of the survey -- also fared poorly. Attitudes towards the United Nations and the European Union were significantly more positive, although they varied widely from region to region. Majorities in 33 of the 47 countries surveyed said they had favourable views of both institutions, with Africa the most positive and the Middle East the least. The rest of the world offered more mixed assessments. Overall, the survey also found a sharp rise in global concern -- led by Brazil, Argentina, France, Venezuela, Peru and Germany -- about environmental threats to the planet compared to five years ago. Pluralities or majorities in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, including China (70 percent), rated the environment as one of the two most important threats facing the world. In 34 of the 37 countries surveyed on the question, the U.S. was named either by a majority or a clear plurality as the country that is "hurting the world's environment the most", while China was the second-most frequently named country as the source of environmental problems. In Sub-Saharan Africa, majorities in all but one of the 10 surveyed countries rated HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases as the top global threat, while in the Middle East, the most-often-cited threats were nuclear proliferation and religious and ethnic hatred. Concern about the growing divide between rich and poor nations was also cited more frequently as a major threat in most regions than in previous surveys. Majorities or pluralities in most countries said they believed U.S. policies increased the gap. The continuing decline in Washington's standing was reflected not only in the belief that it bore most responsibility for environmental threats and the rich-poor gap, but also in growing disapproval for the Bush administration's most prominent foreign policy commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the survey. From 50 percent (Britain and South Africa) to 93 percent (PT) in 43 of 47 countries said the U.S. should withdraw its troops from Iraq, while majorities in 32 countries, including of 80 percent or more in Argentina, Egypt, PT, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and China, said NATO should leave Afghanistan. In 30 out of 34 countries that were polled on the question in 2002, as well as 2007, support for Washington's global war on terror has dropped, particularly in Europe. Even in countries that have experienced terrorist attacks in recent years, including Indonesia, Bangladesh, Spain, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, majorities say they oppose the U.S. campaign. Throughout the Islamic world (with the exception of Pakistan), majorities ranging from 55 percent in Malaysia and Bangladesh to 91 percent in Jordan criticised U.S. policy in the Middle East for favouring Israel "too much". Majorities in France, Germany, and Sweden and clear pluralities in Britain, Canada, South Korea and even Israel itself -- a finding Danforth called a "broadside" against current U.S. policy -- took the same position. Majorities in 30 of 46 countries -- mostly in the Middle East and Europe -- said they believed that Washington tended to act unilaterally in foreign affairs without taking the interests of their countries into account. That view was most strongly held (74 percent or more) by respondents in Sweden, Britain France, Spain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, PT, and South Korea. At the other end of the spectrum, 74 of Israelis said they believed Washington took account of their interests either a "great deal" or a "fair amount". Washington also received high marks on the same subject from Nigeria, Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire, and India. The survey found that the balance of opinion toward China remains favourable in 27 of the 47 countries overall, particularly among a number of its Asian neighbours, notably Malaysia (83 percent favourable), Pakistan (79 percent), Bangladesh (74 percent), and Indonesia (65 percent), and much of sub-Saharan Africa where Beijing's economic investment has grown rapidly. Nonetheless, the survey found double-digit declines over the last several years in its favourability ratings in most of Western Europe, South Korea, Turkey, and Japan. The survey found particularly great concern over China's growing military power in South Korea, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, and Germany. At the same time, both Latin American and African respondents said that China's influence on their region was more positive than U.S. influence.
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Scenario One – Soft Power
Absent more funding to address Africa, the goal of the Act will not be recognized and water assistance will simply be pushed aside on the agenda.
Lochery, CARE Water Team Director, 5/16/07 (Peter, “Beyond the Status Quo: Bringing Down Barriers to Water and Sanitation Provision in Africa through Implementation of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act”, http://www.care.org/newsroom/articles/2007/05/lochery_water_testimony.pdf)
The information presented in the Report revealed that in FY 2005, a bulk of US funding went to countries and regions of strategic interest (like Afghanistan, Iraq, and the West Bank and Gaza), while only roughly $15 million in sustainable water supply and sanitation funding went to sub-Saharan Africa, indisputably one of the areas of greatest need. The Report also counted the amount spent in the emergency sector--which, depending on how you count, receives over 50% of total funding--toward what the US is spending on water and sanitation. While funding relief efforts is essential to saving lives, and an activity that the US should continue to invest in, emergency spending will only go so far in addressing the issue of sustainable access to safe water and sanitation, particularly when there are limited funds for the transition from relief to development. There is no substitute to increasing funding for developmental water and sanitation, which is why the Water for the Poor Act explicitly called for the US to help “expand access to safe water and sanitation in an affordable, equitable, and sustainable manner.” The facts that have come to light with the release of the first State Department Water for the Poor Act Report indicate that US funding must be significantly increased to fill the gaps in addressing the water and sanitation needs of Africa and other under-served areas. Furthermore, they underscore the need to elevate water and sanitation as an explicit priority in order to truly realize the vision incorporated in the legislation.
Water assistance increases our soft power and allows us to accomplish our foreign policy objectives.
CSIS, Sept. 30 2005 (Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Addressing Our Global Water Future” http://water.csis.org/050928_ogwf.pdf)
It is clear that water scarcity, water quality, and water management will affect almost every major U.S. strategic priority in every key region of the world. Addressing the world’s water needs will go well beyond humanitarian and economic development interests. Virtually every major U.S. foreign policy objective—promoting stability and security, reducing extremist violence, democracy building, post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction, poverty reduction, meeting the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, combating HIV/AIDS, promoting bilateral and multilateral relationships—will be contingent to some extent on how well the challenge of global water can be addressed. Because water is so integral to human life, many strategies to promote economic development or humanitarian relief (e.g., poverty reduction or HIV/AIDS relief) cannot be achieved without a recognized water component. Water projects can also strengthen democracy-building projects in areas where such projects are not well-received by fostering inclusive decision making and management processes at a local scale. A review of most post-conflict or unstable areas will demonstrate that water should be a key component in any short-term or long-term regional stabilization and reconstruction effort. Water also has significant implications for U.S. international economic policy. It is a key driver of economic stability and prosperity in a number of important regions across the world. As previously discussed, water has structural linkages with the agricultural, energy and industrial/manufacturing sectors and its availability and quality are therefore critical to prospects for growth and stability. Conversely, if the challenge of access and quality worsens, water could contribute to economic and financial instability and uncertainty. While the debate over water as a potential cause for war in the future continues, the fact remains that water scarcity and poor water quality are destabilizing forces that impact both economic and social stability. Facilitating cooperative arrangements over shared water resources not only diminishes these disruptive forces but also provides avenues for cooperation and political development in other spheres.
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Specifically our soft power in Africa allows us to establishes bases there which is key to sustain hegemony and combat asymmetric threats.
Hall, Colonel in the USAF and US Joint forces command, 2003 (Brian, “Air Expeditionary Access The African Connection”, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/fal03/hall.html#hall)
The NSS notes that, "together with our European allies, we must help strengthen Africa’s fragile states, help build indigenous capability to secure porous borders, and help build up the law enforcement and intelligence infrastructure to deny havens for terrorists."4 We cannot realize these goals without significant power projection and sustainment to a continent of immense size and diversity. The US/ African regional-security strategy must respect multilateral alliances while preparing bilateral engagements that build confidence and strengthen assured access. The administration of President George W. Bush clearly recognizes that it must focus its attention on South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia as anchor states for regional-security cooperation. Yet, other regional players also deserve recognition for maintaining good governance and implementing responsible, democratic political systems- namely Ghana, Gabon, Mali, and Senegal. The administration’s policy towards regional-security cooperation recognizes these states, as it does the entire Sahel. Indeed, the Pan-Sahel Initiative is the most recent cooperative effort spun off from the global war on terrorism.5 Budding democracies have granted US requests for access to counter emerging crises. We will need assured access to shore up rapid response once conflict flares, as it has recently in Liberia and numerous times in Africa over the last decade. Striving to balance global power as it develops new national-security strategies, the United States finds itself in a unique hegemonic position. From a classic political perspective, this is not necessarily bad because if one nation dominates the international arena with overwhelming power, peace and stability reign since there is little point in declaring war against such a state. Political scientist Robert Gilpin has argued that "Pax Britannica and Pax Americana, like Pax Romana, ensured an international system of relative peace and security."6 Unlike the Britain of the past, which controlled a global empire, America possesses a large, self-sustaining home economy and has the ability to project great soft power (the art of diplomacy, transparent military cooperation, and economic reform) to all corners of the globe. Thus, the United States is more apt to send food and medical supplies than a man-of-war to Africa. Power projection and access go hand in hand. In this article, air expedition becomes the means of power projection, and access is its enabler. But one has to peel back the discussion of national power another layer or two to adequately portray the type of power best suited to project towards Africa. Of course, the United States must always be prepared to exercise both military and economic hard power to induce other parties to change their positions. Major force deployments and economic sanctions are two examples of the compelling projection of hard power, which is relatively easy to use when access is predictable and overseas presence extensive. A large, permanent US presence and investment (military and economic) in Europe, the Pacific, and the Middle East demonstrate America’s willingness to use hard power. But one can exercise power indirectly: that is, a country can obtain desired outcomes in world politics because other countries admire its values, emulate its example, aspire to its level of prosperity and openness, and therefore want to follow it.7 Soft power is more than persuasion or the ability to move people by argument.8 The United States would be in dire straits if it lost the ability to shape the international landscape by credibly
projecting hard and soft power. America’s hegemony comes into play less often when its soft power is strong and associated with the tenets of benevolence and human dignity. Africa is ripe for soft-power engagement. Great hard-power resources, such as those invested in the Middle East, Europe, and the Pacific, are not needed in Africa. Soft-power projection will go a long way towards securing vital American interests. Credible projectors of soft power include Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, each of which has political clout that vastly exceeds its military and economic weight. All four nations incorporate attractive soft implements such as economic aid and peacekeeping assets into their definition of national interests, thereby negating the necessity for costly hard power. Limited objectives allow for exclusive soft-power foreign policies. Interestingly, governments are not the only wielders of soft power. US industries and NGOs develop their own soft power, which might either complement or compete with official foreign policy. But there is no room for friction between players when scarce resources are better applied by collaborative efforts that assure widespread access- a classic, symbiotic soft-power relationship. In Africa, competing unilateral efforts tend not to survive. From the onset, complementary private and public cooperation has a greater impact and longer-lasting effects. For that reason, the US military plays a substantial role in transporting, distributing, and supporting the wares of many NGOs and official government programs. There are ways to assure that all US interests in Africa are safely supportable and, if necessary, introduced in-theater via expeditionary, global-mobility, and rapid-response task forces. Little difference exists in the planning, executing, and sustaining of air expeditionary task forces for other-than-major conflicts. Although their scope and character are vastly different, the strength of air expeditionary task forces lies in the transformational capabilities of each. In Africa, the potential for rapid global mobility and agile combat support (ACS), reinforced with distributed command and control capabilities, is perfect for future area operations. Air expeditionary forces (most likely part of a joint task force) will rapidly move, position, and sustain these forces. Rapid global mobility
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demonstrates an improved ability to support operations with a smaller force and footprint while transiting distances in minimum time. ACS, which begins well before deployment, provides many capabilities crucial to successful beddown and sustainment, including readying the force; assessing,
planning, and posturing for employment; tailoring and preparing for movement, deployment, and reception; employing effectively; and sustaining appropriate levels of support for theater operations.9 Although these concepts and capabilities sound promising, nonstate entities preparing for conflict with the United States will seek to capitalize on the great distances US forces must travel to engage them. Those evasive enemies realize all too well the near-absolute reliance of the United States on unimpeded access to and use of airfields and bases in the potential theater of conflict.10 In today’s environment of crisis action, quickly getting in-theater is as important as what one does after forces arrive. The Bush administration’s greatest concern for the projection of military power to Africa is establishing select sites that form the greatest foothold once the boots hit the ground.
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Scenario Two – China
China’s increasing influence in Africa is fueling its rise to global power.
Chau, Adjunct faculty member in Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, 2007, Strategic Studies Institute (Donovan, “POLITICAL WARFARE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: U.S. CAPABILITIES AND CHINESE OPERATIONS IN ETHIOPIA, KENYA, NIGERIA, AND SOUTH AFRICA”, March, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub766.pdf)
PRC political warfare operations followed a similar pattern in all four African countries. But did the PRC achieve the central objective of its grand strategy? The PRC had a mission, and it set out to achieve it.205 The PRC sought—and continues to seek—to become a global power. It seeks to exercise predominant influence over Africa—its governments and people—and eliminate Western influence. In all four countries, the PRC demonstrated that it was able to gain access to and influence the affairs of the African governments, businesses, and communities using political warfare. By exerting greater influence in each African country, Beijing was successful in furthering the central objective of its grand strategy—to become a global power. Since 2000, the PRC has enhanced its bilateral political, military, and economic relations with the African countries; it has gained further access to natural resources, particularly in Ethiopia and Nigeria; and it has received greater respect from the African businesses and communities. Political warfare, one instrument of grand strategy, was essential to Beijing’s success. The cases also demonstrate that the PRC intentionally targeted African countries that were deemed crucial to U.S. Africa policy, also recognizing their geopolitical importance to influencing the African continent as whole. Prior to 2000, the PRC was not influential in the four anchor countries. Today, it exerts influence in each country and is perceived as a global power by the local peoples and governments. Political warfare was crucial to Beijing’s achievement of this position of prominence.
China’s influence is growing in Africa due to lack of US influence – it’s zero-sum.
Lovelace, director of the Strategic Studies Institute, 2007 (Douglas, Forward to “Political Warfare in Sub-Saharan Africa”, March)
Africa today has emerged as a continent of strategic consequence. Domestic and international terrorism aside, the two great powers of our time, the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), are vying for influence over African governments and people. Not unlike the Cold War, the primary means of exerting influence in Africa is through the use of non-violent instruments of grand strategy. In this monograph, Dr. Donovan Chau considers one nonviolent instrument of grand strategy in particular, political warfare. Retracing the origins and mischaracterizations of political warfare, Dr. Chau suggests that the PRC has used political warfare as its leading grand strategic instrument in Africa. The monograph offers a concise, detailed overview of U.S. capabilities to conduct political warfare in Africa. It then examines PRC political warfare operations in four regional “anchor” states—Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. What emerges from Dr. Chau’s analyses is the Chinese use of political warfare intentionally targeting U.S. interests in Africa. Unless the U.S. Government recognizes the utility of political warfare and reorients the federal bureaucracy to employ it effectively, he intimates that future U.S. influence in Africa will wane— to the benefit of a country that understands political warfare and uses it seriously.
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US water assistance uniquely increases US influence.
Petersen, CSIS, 2007 (Erik, “Below the Surface: U.S. International Water Policy”, Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 19th, http://forums.csis.org/gsi/?p=384)
As we scan the more distant time horizons, the dimensions of the water challenge will probably increase significantly. If you superimpose projections for rapid population growth on a map of the world, it will likely occur in those areas of the world that are already the most distressed when it comes to water. What are the two areas of the world forecast to have the highest population growth out to the middle of the century? Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. As monumental as the challenges are in those two regions, they do not stop there. Water looms large as a critical catalyst to—or constraint on—development in countries from China to Chile, India to Indonesia, Russia to Rwanda. By 2025, according to the United Nations, it is possible that more than 2.5 billion people will live in countries experiencing serious water stress. The aggregate numbers could rise even further if the effects of global warming and broader environmental degradation persist, as expected. For all these reasons, one would think that water would be a central component in U.S. foreign policy. Targeting water as an instrument of Washington's engagement with the rest of the world would enable policymakers to assist with humanitarian relief, strengthen human health, support other public health commitments (such as efforts to address HIV/AIDS), promote economic development, advance opportunities for girls and women, and improve the capacity of countries to protect themselves against drought, on the one hand, or floods, on the other. Furthermore, it would imply important commercial opportunities for U.S.-domiciled corporations working in water-related technologies and processes. Targeting water would also yield other geopolitical dividends—including removing what is a serious obstacle to stability and security within states and reducing the possibility for conflict or tension between countries with shared water resources. Finally, water represents an avenue for the United States to demonstrate leadership in the world at a time when its image has eroded so considerably. In short, a water-centered set of policies could represent a remarkable opportunity for the United States to "do good" while "doing well" when it comes to pursuing its own interests in the world. If that’s the theory, then the reality becomes all the more difficult to comprehend. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), U.S. official development assistance commitments for water supply and sanitation in 1999-2000 amounted to less than two percent ($165m) of total national assistance—the lowest (with New Zealand) of any OECD member state.1 By 2003-2004 the U.S. level had grown to $521m, according to the same OECD statistics, but the lion’s share of the rise was attributable to increased financial assistance directed to Iraq—and even at that level, total assistance was well below the corresponding level for Japan, the OECD leader in water spending. Of the water-related U.S. support not channeled into Iraq, moreover, a disproportionate percentage was allocated to the Middle East and not to regions such as sub-Saharan Africa where the problems are the greatest. In other words, politics are trumping need. Le plus ça change...
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Chinese perceptions of containment are inevitable – preventing China from becoming a global power is key to prevent massive transition wars and a collapse of hegemony.
Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005, Washington Post (Robert, “The Illusion of ‘Managing’ China”, lexis)
The history of rising powers, however, and their attempted "management" by established powers provides little reason for confidence or comfort. Rarely have rising powers risen without sparking a major war that reshaped the international system to reflect new realities of power. The most successful "management" of a rising power in the modern era was Britain's appeasement of the United States in the late 19th century, when the British effectively ceded the entire Western Hemisphere (except Canada) to the expansive Americans. The fact that both powers shared a common liberal, democratic ideology, and thus roughly consonant ideas of international order, greatly lessened the risk of accommodation from the British point of view. Other examples are less encouraging. Germany's rise after 1870, and Europe's reaction to it, eventually produced World War I. Even the masterly Bismarck, after a decade of successful German self-management, had a difficult time steering Europe away from collision. The British tried containment, appeasement and even offers of alliance, but never fully comprehended Kaiser Wilhelm's need to challenge the British supremacy he both admired and envied. Right up until the eve of war, highly regarded observers of the European scene believed commercial ties among the leading powers made war between them unlikely, if not impossible. Japan's rise after 1868 produced two rounds of warfare -- first with China and Russia at the turn of the century, and later with the United States and Britain in World War II. The initial Anglo-American response to Japan's growing power was actually quite accommodating. Meiji Japan had chosen the path of modernization and even Westernization, or so it seemed, and Americans welcomed its ascendancy over backward China and despotic Russia. Then, too, there was the paternalistic hope of assisting Japan's entry into the international system, which was to say the Western system. "The Japs have played our game," Theodore Roosevelt believed, and only occasionally did he wonder whether "the Japanese down at bottom did not lump Russians, English, Americans, Germans, all of us, simply as white devils inferior to themselves . . . and to be treated politely only so long as would enable the Japanese to take advantage of our national jealousies, and beat us in turn." Today we look back at those failures and ruminate on the mistakes made with the usual condescension that the present has for the past. But there is no reason to believe we are any smarter today than the policymakers who "mismanaged" the rise of Germany and Japan. The majority of today's policymakers and thinkers hold much the same general view of global affairs as their forebears: namely, that commercial ties between China and the other powers, especially with Japan and the United States, and also with Taiwan, will act as a buffer against aggressive impulses and ultimately ease China's "integration" into the international system without war. Once again we see an Asian power modernizing and believe this should be a force for peace. And we add to this the conviction, also common throughout history, that if we do nothing to provoke China, then it will be peaceful, without realizing that it may be the existing international system that the Chinese find provocative. The security structures of East Asia, the Western liberal values that so dominate our thinking, the "liberal world order" we favor -- this is the "international system" into which we would "integrate" China. But isn't it possible that China does not want to be integrated into a political and security system that it had no part in shaping and that conforms neither to its ambitions nor to its own autocratic and hierarchical principles of rule? Might not China, like all rising powers of the past, including the United States, want to reshape the international system to suit its own purposes, commensurate with its new power, and to make the world safe for its autocracy? Yes, the Chinese want the prosperity that comes from integration in the global economy, but might they believe, as the Japanese did a century ago, that the purpose of getting rich is not to join the international system but to change it? We may not know the answers to these questions. But we need to understand that the nature of China's rise will be determined largely by the Chinese and not by us. The Chinese leadership may already believe the United States is its enemy, for instance, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Partly this is due to our actions -- such as the strengthening of the U.S.-Japanese military alliance, which began during the Clinton administration, and our recent efforts to enhance strategic ties with India. Partly it is due to our different forms of government, since autocratic rulers naturally feel threatened by a democratic superpower and its democratic allies around their periphery. Partly it is due to the nature of the situation in East Asia. It used to be an article of faith among Sinologists that the Chinese did not want to drive the United States out of the region. Today many are not so sure. It would not be unusual if an increasingly powerful China wanted to become the dominant power in its own region, and dominant not just economically but in all other respects, as well. When one contemplates how to "manage" that, however, comforting notions of gradualness, predictability and time begin to fade. The obvious choices would seem to lie between ceding American predominance in the region and taking steps to contain China's understandable ambitions. Not many Americans favor the former course, and for sound political, moral and strategic reasons. But let's not kid ourselves. It will be hard to pursue the latter course without treating China as at least a prospective enemy, and not just 20 years from now, but now. Nor, if that is the choice, can Chinese leaders be expected to wait patiently while the web of containment is strengthened around them. More likely, they will periodically want to challenge both the United States and its allies in the region to back off. Crises could come sooner than expected, and without much warning, requiring difficult judgments about the risks and rewards of both action and inaction. That is likely what the future holds. The United States may not be able to avoid a policy of containing China; we are, in fact, already doing so. This is a sufficiently unsettling prospect, however, that we are doing all we can to avoid thinking about it. We conjure hopeful images of a modernizing China that seeks only economic growth and would do nothing to threaten commercial ties with us -- unless provoked -- even as we watch nervously the small but steady Chinese military buildup, the periodic eruptions of popular nationalism, the signs of Chinese confidence intermingled with
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feelings of historical injustice and the desire to right old wrongs. Which China is it? A 21st-century power that wants to be integrated into a liberal international order, which would mean both a transformation of its own polity and a limitation of its strategic ambitions? Or a 19th-century power that wants to preserve its rule at home and expand its reach abroad? It is a worthy subject for debate, because the answer will determine the future as much as or more than anything we do. But it is unlikely we will have a definitive answer in time to adjust, to "manage" China's "rise," any more than our predecessors did. As in the past, we will have to peer into the fog and make prudent judgments, informed by the many tragic lessons of history.
There is no alternative to US hegemony – collapse will cause a global power vacuum resulting in worldwide atrocities, ending in extinction.
Ferguson – Professor of History at New York University's Stern School of Business and Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution – 2004
[Niall, “A world without power,” Foreign Policy 143, p. 32-39, July-August]
<So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous--roughly 20 times more--so friction between the world's disparate "tribes" is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now possible not just to sack a city but to oblmiterate it. For more than two decades, globalization--the integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital--has raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalization--which a new Dark Age would produce--would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy--from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai--would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should frighten us today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from global hegemony--its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier--its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity--a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder.>
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Finally, they can’t win an impact – war and instability can only occur absent US primacy, and collapse of hege would collapse the entire liberal order upon which civilization rests.
Thayer, 2006 (Bradley, prof. of security studies at Missouri State, The National Interest, “In Defense of Primacy”, November/December, p. 32-37)
A grand strategy based on American primacy means ensuring the United States stays the world's number one power--the diplomatic, economic and military leader. Those arguing against primacy claim that the United States should retrench, either because the United States lacks the power to maintain its primacy and should withdraw from its global commitments, or because the maintenance of primacy will lead the United States into the trap of "imperial overstretch." In the previous issue of The National Interest, Christopher Layne warned of these dangers of primacy and called for retrenchment.1 Those arguing for a grand strategy of retrenchment are a diverse lot. They include isolationists, who want no foreign military commitments; selective engagers, who want U.S. military commitments to centers of economic might; and offshore balancers, who want a modified form of selective engagement that would have the United States abandon its landpower presence abroad in favor of relying on airpower and seapower to defend its interests. But retrenchment, in any of its guises, must be avoided. If the United States adopted such a strategy, it would be a profound strategic mistake that would lead to far greater instability and war in the world, imperil American security and deny the United States and its allies the benefits of primacy. There are two critical issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the dominant state? Should it strive to do this? America can remain dominant due to its prodigious military, economic and soft power capabilities. The totality of that equation of power answers the first issue. The United States has overwhelming military capabilities and wealth in comparison to other states or likely potential alliances. Barring some disaster or tremendous folly, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. With few exceptions, even those who advocate retrenchment acknowledge this. So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining American primacy. Proponents of retrenchment focus a great deal on the costs of U.S. action--but they fail to realize what is good about American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every day; the benefits that stem from it are not. A GRAND strategy of ensuring American primacy takes as its starting point the protection of the U.S. homeland and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary regimes flourish and that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to the United States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or the Australians in East Timor. In contrast, a strategy based on retrenchment will not be able to achieve these fundamental objectives of the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United States less secure than the present grand strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no matter what role America chooses to play in international politics. Washington cannot call a "time out", and it cannot hide from threats. Whether they are terrorists, rogue states or rising powers, history shows that threats must be confronted. Simply by declaring that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or making unconvincing half-pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weakness and emboldens aggression. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront the strong. The same is true of the anarchic world of international politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats that confront the United States, then the conventional and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats. And when enemies must be confronted, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies overseas, away from American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks against the United States itself. This requires a physical, on-the-ground presence that cannot be achieved by offshore balancing. Indeed, as Barry Posen has noted, U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the "global commons"--the oceans, the world's airspace and outer space--allowing the United States to project its power far from its borders, while denying those common avenues to its enemies. As a consequence, the costs of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the robustness of the United States' conventional and strategic deterrent capabilities is increased.2 This is not an advantage that should be relinquished lightly. A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly and unambiguously on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes--their own protection, or to gain greater influence. Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this country, or any country, had so many allies. U.S. primacy--and the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to
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consistently resist the agenda and actions of the United States. China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will, if necessary, resort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communication and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates. The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases--Venezuela, Iran, Cuba--it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically anti-American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides. Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"--it serves, de facto, as the world's police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries in need. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces. American generosity has done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United States also provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg.
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Thus the plan;
The United States federal government should fund and implement the Water for the Poor Act for all topically defined areas. We’ll clarify.
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Observation Four – Solvency
Funding the Act could completely solve the water crisis within the decade.
Natural Resource Defense Council, Jan 2007 (“Global Safe Water: Solving the World’s Most Pressing Environmental Health Problem”, http://www.nrdc.org/international/water/safewater.pdf)
U.S. Steps to Secure Safe Water by 2015 In 2005, Congress passed the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, which made the provision of safe water and sanitation a cornerstone of U.S. foreign assistance by integrating water and sanitation into all U.S. development programs. The act requires the Secretary of State to develop a strategy to expand access to clean water for millions of people in the developing world to meet the UN’s 2015 target. But Congress has yet to designate any funds to implement the act, effectively crippling it. A Call for Congressional Action NRDC and other organizations are calling on Congress to fully fund the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act in 2007. The act presents an opportunity for the United States to not only to engage international organizations in targeting the places of greatest need, but also to provide permanent solutions to one of the world’s worst environmental health problems. Safe drinking water is an essential step for human health and economic development. With simple sanitation improvements and basic water treatment and delivery, the world’s largest environmental health crisis can be resolved in the next decade.
The Water for the Poor Act is key to rebuilding successful water infrastructure.
Hauter Executive Director, Food & Water Watch. 2005. (Wenonah, “Water for the Poor Act of 2005” http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/right/poor-act)
U.S. policy is currently focused on policy, law, institutions, and operational strategies. The Water for the Poor Act necessitates a move to prioritize direct infrastructure investments, whether through U.S. government departments or delegated projects carried out by civil society organizations. Policy and institution building alone will not fulfill the mission of the Water for the Poor Act or deliver affordable and equitable access. With the Water for the Poor Act, the United States must step up and take a more active role in funding water infrastructure.
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The Water for the Poor Act is necessary to alleviate water stress and stabilize disparate countries.
Kraus, executive CP of Citizens for Global Solutions, and Holt, Edward Rawson Fellow at Citizens for Global Solutions, 4/5/05 (Don and Dominic, “THICKER THAN BLOOD”, http://oldsite.globalsolutions.org/press_room/news/news_thicker_blood.html)
The Water for the Poor Act is significant for a number of reasons. To begin with, the bipartisan work of Sens. Bill Frist, R-Tenn. and Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Reps. Earl Blumenauer. D-Ore, James Leach, R-Iowa, and others, in introducing the act is a demonstration of how U.S. foreign policy once was, and how the American public would like it to be. Of equal significance, however, is that the legislation tackles, head on, one of the world’s worst problems: the global water crisis. Although relatively unknown in the Western world, the global water crisis represents a serious geopolitical and humanitarian quandary. Today, one child dies every 15 seconds from a water-related disease. That’s 3,000 to 5,000 children a day and up to 5 million young lives lost each year. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.2 billion people live their daily lives without access to clean water, and 2.4 billion people lack adequate sanitation. Reducing this number of needless victims could be accomplished by a greater commitment to foreign aid on the part of the United States and the developed world. This goal must be realized, especially when one considers the costs that lack of water and sanitation inflicts on an already-impoverished society. Solving the global water crisis is necessary for impoverished nations to stabilize, develop and avoid becoming breeding grounds for conflict and terrorism. According to the U.N. Task Force on Water and Sanitation, more than “half the people in the developing world are suffering from one or more of the main diseases associated with inadequate provision of water supply and sanitation.” With the majority of the population crippled by disease, faltering nations cannot keep the peace, provide education and jobs or develop economies—much less give hope to those already suffering.
Only the US has the watershed data necessary to conduct effective assistance.
CSIS 5 (9-30, Center for Strategic & Internat’l Studies, Global Water Futures, http://www.sandia.gov/water/docs/CSISSNL_OGWF_9-28-05.PDF)
Long-term data on water resources are essential for understanding historic and current impacts of human activities on water resources. In addition, historical data are important for projecting future trajectories of water resources from different scenarios of future population growth, consumption patterns and management strategies (See Smith et al. 1987, Spahr and Winn 1997, Passell et al. 2005). In most regions of the world, long-term data sets are patchy or unavailable. Datasets that do exist were often collected at different times, by different organizations, using different collection and analytical methods. Consequently, information on a single river or aquifer that crosses jurisdictional or political boundaries is not easily comparable. Further complicating crossborder management, data often are not shared among transboundary resource managers, either for political reasons or simply because data sharing mechanisms and agreements are not in place. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has pioneered and mastered long-term, whole-basin, remote data gathering technologies for the United States, including real-time river discharge, but similar programs in other countries and regions around the world are rare. Pioneering whole-basin, international, transboundary data collection and data sharing projects currently exists among four Central Asian nations in the Aral Sea Basin (Passell et al. 2002, Barber et al. 2005; http://ironside.sandia.gov/Central/centralasia.html), and among three nations in the South Caucasus (Armen Saghatelyan, National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Armenia, personal communication; http://www.kura-araksAddressing Our Global Water Future Page 92 Center for Strategic and International Studies Sandia National Laboratories natosfp.org/). These projects include stakeholder institutions from all the partner countries; standardized monitoring, data collection and analytical technologies; and data sharing websites open to project partners and the public. These projects allow whole-basin water quantity and quality analyses never possible before. As in many cases, technologies available for these kinds of projects around the world are available, but without comprehensive policy initiatives the projects themselves are few and far between.
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Observation Five – Framework
Our interpretation of debate is the impacts of the negative’s kritiks must be evaluated at an equal level with the affirmative impacts as specific consequences of political implementation. This is best:
- Ground – they will always win their principles are better in the abstract; debating the merit of their arguments is only possible if they defend specific consequences of implementation.
Ignatieff, Carr prof. of human rights at Harvard, 2004 (Michael, Carr professor of human rights at Harvard, 2004 Lesser Evils p. 18-19)As for moral perfectionism, this would be the doctrine that a liberal state should never have truck with dubious moral means and should spare its officials the hazard of having to decide between lesser and greater evils. A moral perfectionist position also holds that states can spare their officials this hazard simply by adhering to the universal moral standards set out in human rights conventions and the laws of war. There are two problems with a perfectionist stance, leaving aside the question of whether it is realistic. The first is that articulating nonrevocable, nonderogable moral standards is relatively easy. The problem is deciding how to apply them in specific cases. What is the line between interrogation and torture, between targeted killing and unlawful assassination, between preemption and aggression? Even when legal and moral distinctions between these are clear in the abstract, abstractions are less than helpful when political leaders have to choose between them in practice. Furthermore, the problem with perfectionist standards is that they contradict each other. The same person who shudders, rightly, at the prospect of torturing a suspect might be prepared to kill the same suspect in a preemptive attack on a terrorist base. Equally, the perfectionist commitment to the right to life might preclude such attacks altogether and restrict our response to judicial pursuit of offenders through process of law. Judicial responses to the problem of terror have their place, but they are no substitute for military operations when terrorists possess bases, training camps, and heavy weapons. To stick to a perfectionist commitment to the right to life when under terrorist attack might achieve moral consistency at the price of leaving us defenseless in the face of evildoers. Security, moreover, is a human right, and thus respect for one right might lead us to betray another.
- Limits – there are limitless contexts through which the negative can advocate their position, making it impossible for us to debate them on it; fairness must preclude all consideration of their advocacy or else all contestation becomes meaningless.
Shively, Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M, 2K (Ruth Lessl, Political Theory and Partisan Politics, p. 181-2)The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say "no" to—they must reject and limit—some ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say "yes" to some things. In particular, they must say "yes" to the idea of rational persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that agreement marks the end of contest—that consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect—if there is nothing at all left to question or contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrator's audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
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- Education – by using the topic as a means to access their criticism they skirt debate over policymaking and are distrusting of pragmatic study and reform – even if they have good intentions, their message will only result in fascist totalitarianism.
Lewis, assistant prof. at George Washington University, 1992 [Martin, Green Delusions, p. 258]A majority of those born between 1960 and 1980 seem to tend toward cynicism, and we can thus hardly expect them to be converted en masse to radical doctrines of social and environmental salvation by a few committed thinkers. It is actually possible that a radical education may make them even more cynical than they already are. While their professors may find the extreme relativism of subversive postmodernism bracingly liberating, many of today's students may embrace only the new creed's rejection of the past. Stripped of leftist social concerns, radical postmodernism's contempt for established social and political philosophy—indeed, its contempt for liberalism—may well lead to right-wing totalitarianism. When cynical, right-leaning students are taught that democracy is a sham and that all meaning derives from power, they are being schooled in fascism, regardless of their instructors' intentions. According to sociologist Jeffrey Goldfarb (1991), cynicism is the hallmark—and main defect—of the current age. He persuasively argues that cynicism's roots lie in failed left- and right-wing ideologies—systems of thought that deductively connect "a simple rationalized absolute truth ... to a totalized set of political actions and policies" (1991:82). Although most eco-radicals are anything but cynical when they imagine a "green future," they do take a cynical turn when contemplating the present political order. The dual cynical-ideological mode represents nothing less than the death of liberalism and of reform. Its dangers are eloquently spelled out by Goldfarb (1991:9): "When one thinks ideologically and acts ideologically, opponents become enemies to be vanquished, political compromise becomes a kind of immorality, and constitutional refinements become inconvenient niceties.
- Vote Aff – restricting debate to arguments about consequences of policymaking is a revolutionary concept that reorients civic agency and invigorates social interdependence.
Gundersen, associate prof. of polisci at Texas A&M, 2K (Adolf G., Political Theory and Partisan Politics, p. 108-9)Will deliberation work the same way among ordinary citizens? Yes and no. Yes, deliberation will tend to heighten citizens appreciation of their interdependence. At the same time, the results are likely to be analogous rather than identical to those in formal governmental bodies, since citizen deliberation must of course function in the absence of the institutional interdependence established by the US constitution, with its clear specification of joint responsibilities. The theoretical mutuality of interests assumed by the Constitution exists among ordinary citizens, too. The difference is that they have only their interests, not the impetus of divided power, to encourage them to discover and articulate them. Granted. But once they begin to do so, they are every bit as likely to succeed as the average representative. Citizen deliberation, in other words, will intensify citizens' appreciation of interdependence. Although I cannot prove the point, there are compelling reasons to think that citizen deliberation yields an awareness of overlapping interests. I have already alluded to the first, and perhaps most telling of these: if governors in a system of divided government such as our own succeed in deliberating their way to the public interest (however imperfectly or irregularly), surely ordinary citizens can be counted upon to do the same thing. Indeed, if my initial argument that decision-making spells the end of deliberation is on the mark, then we have good reason to expect citizens to deliberate better than their representatives. One can add to these theoretical considerations a lengthening list of empirical findings which suggest not only that citizens are willing and able to engage in political deliberation, but also that they are quite able to do so—able, that is, precisely in the sense of coming to a deeper appreciation of the collective nature of the problems they face (Dale et al. 1995; Gundersen 1995; Dryzek 1990; see also Gundersen n.d., chapter 4). In the end, the claim that deliberation enhances interdependence is hardly a radical one. After all, if deliberation will of itself diminish partisanship, as I started out by saying, it must at the same time enhance interdependence. To aim between Athens and Philadelphia requires, perhaps more than anything else, a changed way of thinking about partisanship. Institutions and ways of thinking tend to change together; hence if the institutional reorientation suggested here is to take root, it must be accompanied by a new way of thinking about partisanship. Shifting our appraisal of partisanship will amount to a nothing less than a new attitude toward politics. It will require that we aspire to something new, something that is at once less lofty (and less threatening) than the unity to which direct democracy is supposed to lead, but more democratic (and more deliberative) than encouraging political deliberation among a selected group of representatives. As I argued above, it will require that we seek to stimulate deliberation among all citizens. With Madison, we need to view partisanship as inevitable. Collective choice, indeed choice itself, is a partisan affair. But we also need to resist the equation of politics and partisanship. If politics is seen as nothing more than a clash of partisan interests, it is likely to stay at that level. Conversely, for deliberation to work, it must be seen as reasonable, if not all-illuminating—as efficacious, if not all-powerful. At the same time, of course, citizens must borrow a page from the participatory democrat's book by coming to view deliberation as their responsibility rather than something that is done only by others in city hall, the state capitol, or Congress—others who are, after all, under direct and constant pressure to act rather than deliberate. Politics, in other words, must be resuscitated as an allegiance to democratic deliberation.